Genre exercises are a way to conceal deeper motives within film. While we are occupied with the stimulation of basic emotions (action film-anger, horror-fear, romance-stupidity), other messages have a way of sneaking past or leaving a greater impression than if they were fed to the audience in a more obvious fashion. The Quarry is ostensibly a noir drama; a man who remains unnamed is on the run from police, adopts the identity of a priest, and hides in a rural town in the Northern Cape region of South Africa. The film is minimalist almost to a fault, with a lack of any real backstory for the characters. A yawning echo chamber is created with empty space where background details would normally serve as entertaining distraction. During those voids, the mind is left to wander and wonder why any of these people are here. Without plot points to serve as guideposts, the audience projects its own fears and anxieties upon The Quarry, and this is where the film excels. We are drawn along by the spare story and led into the layers of subtext like a vacuum draws air.

The Stranger begins and ends the film on the run; from the very start we know where this is heading, and the vanishing point provides a portent of sustained anxiety. He has no backstory; we do not know what he did or if he indeed has a plan. We know only that he has escaped and does not intend to stop running. As portrayed by John Lynch, he is gaunt, laconic, and a fascinating cipher. He strikes one as a danger, but only by virtue of desperation. He also carries a deeply buried guilt that ties into the strongly religious subtext. On the road he is given a lift by a priest who is on the way to a rural township to replace a departed minister. The ride and gifts of food and cigarettes would seem a kind gesture, but there are no saints here. Everyone has their reasons for what is given and taken. The Stranger kills him and takes the man’s identity; this is not a surprise, as every action seems telegraphed ahead of time in a miasma of dread. He continues to the church where he is taken in and he rests on actual sheets for what appears to be the first time in years. Of course, there is no rest here as the authorities still search for him, his truck is broken into by a thief who learns that The Stranger is no priest, and a sardonic police captain takes an interest in him.

Identity is malleable, and in The Quarry it is clear that Who We Are is not as important as What We Seem. The Man is white, and so receives a certain measure of trust; this is a truism in South Africa then and now. The captain greets the new priest: “I was expecting a Coloured Man.” He responds: “We all are by now, in this country.” Long through its history South Africa has had a rocky relationship with race and identity. From the violent interactions between European colonials and the San/Khoikhoi peoples on the cape and later the Bantu-speaking peoples of the eastern regions, to the Byzantine laws that created the separation of Apartheid, there has been the assumption of white superiority. Whites receive better education and resources as they are expected to utilized them best; they are above reproach. Blacks and the various subgroups designed to keep Blacks, Coloureds, Asians, and Indians at each others’ throats are assumed to be at war with Whites, and this is not really untrue. There is some honesty to acknowledging the tribalism inherent to our human species, but the legal structures were designed to oppress as much as keep separate, and so the results were disastrous.

In The Quarry, the Man is a killer, but is assumed to be innocent with no real discussion on the matter. A Coloured man (half-White, half-Black – the term is in correct use today and has a different connotation from the American term) is blamed for the murder when a body is found, and the evidence is circumstantial, but his color is most damning. This is not unusual, but The Man is seized by guilt in a way that is individual, but is also a commentary on South Africa’s discomfort with its racist past. The Man is an unknown quantity, and so other characters project their own prejudices on him as an audience surrogate; at the same time, we do the same thing, writing The Stranger’s backstory as the movie goes on. Even today, people acknowledge the unfairness about the past without coming to real terms with it. We see the same phenomenon in the United States with Whites and Blacks ever at odds with how to deal with economic and social disparities between race while assuming all is equal after a Black Presidency. Whites cannot deal practically with the circumstances of the past that gave them an advantage, while Blacks cannot come to grips with the ways their culture has been corrupted and become counterproductive. The dialogue is stifled, our mutual loathing becomes a silent, withdrawn geniality.

There is a strong religious subtext to The Quarry, though there does not appear to be an actual God at work. The Stranger is a priest and despite knowing not a word of verse, takes to the task well. He is seen as a good man, and wears the frock skillfully, his sermons fed by his intense fear and guilt draw full crowds. The Baptist Church provides him with a haven, and temporarily forgives him his history, but he is on the run even when stationary. Fate hangs over his shoulder, as expressed by a particularly depressing service quoting heavily from Jeremiah. The police captain is intrigued, and glimpses the shame that bleeds off The Stranger in waves. Still, the guy is a white priest, and must be beyond reproach. This country has deep religious roots, and the relationship the Whites have with God have been useful in both justifying subjugation of inferior races and assuaging any guilt coming from inequality. The Battle of Blood River in 1838 was a retaliatory strike against King Dingane for the slaughter of Piet Retief and hundreds of unarmed settlers who were invited to dine peacefully with the Zulus. When Andre Pretorius’s foray resulted in thousands of dead Zulu warriors and only two minor injuries in his own camp, it was clearly a Covenant with God to dominate this land. Though muted today, these beliefs remain buried close to the surface. It is an uncomfortable history, but religion is both a salve and an albatross upon the people of South Africa. When The Stranger’s church is burned to the ground, it is clear that religion is no longer relevant to where the nation is headed, and provides no protection from the past.

The Quarry was made in 1998, after the collapse of Apartheid and in the midst of South Africa’s economic free-fall. It is not hopeful about what would happen when the inevitable arrived. The Man is destined for a violent end, and this is a commentary on the uncertain future of South Africa. The Afrikaner police captain pursues the Stranger, who is running out of road; a new country is about to emerge from Apartheid, and its history may destroy its hope for a peaceful future. Though the handover of power to the African National Congress was seen as a triumph of reconciliation, thousands died in the political strife during elections, and even today South Africa is effectively a one-party state. A Tswana gentleman once told me that democracy was of dubious value. “One man, one vote means everyone votes for one man.” Economic differences between the racial groups are actually worse now than during the reign of the National Party.

The Quarry has dual meaning. A man is slain, his body dumped in a rock quarry, a common sight in a nation that made its fortune off mining. The Stranger is forever pursued, he is the quarry of the police. A country with an awkward sense of itself is chased by its own history, by fits and starts coming to terms with a past steeped in religion, violence, racism, and acceptance. Lynch gives a memorable performance embodying a nonspecific Man both frightened and resigned, and a symbol well rendered. When he is compelled to preside over a funeral and realizes that he will shortly be presiding over two more that he will cause, he is driven to act. There is no practical way to bury the past. It is in the moments of self-destruction that we as individuals and as a society can move towards a greater understanding of ourselves and the world around us. As a symbol, he silently reconciles with the black man who faces execution under a racist system, and they head off together to an uncertain future which may be more honest, but in which nothing is promised.

Isolated from the African mainland and marked by extraordinary geographical variation and seasonal extremes, Madagascar has been the stage for a unique evolutionary direction for its plant and animal life. Far from adaptation dead ends, these organisms have found ways to endure the most hostile environments. In the event of a global catastrophe, this unique island will suffer its share, but the great variety of life and their methods of survival would have little difficulty in recovering. A spine of mountains runs the length of Madagascar’s north-south axis, splitting it in two for both climate and animal populations. The moist air and monsoon rains bathe the lush tropical forests of the east, while the west is shielded from water for the most part, a land of dry groves of thousand-year old baobab trees. The southern aspect of the island is an alien world of salt, and dry, gnarled woodlands. The center of the island is a plateau of rock plagued by earthquakes, rending the surface with cracks and valleys; the center is occupied by a lake born of this upheaval. The Western edge is a series of limestone reefs, resembling an ancient skeletal leviathan. Each habitat is rife with extraordinary species; more than 80% are found nowhere else on Earth.

When Pangaea broke apart 90 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period, Madagascar chipped off the Indian subcontinent and sat astride Africa’s east coast, the world’s oldest island. At some point in its history, plants and animals were swept across the ocean onto the land, for the most part remaining isolated from the rest of the African continent since. Some of the inhabitants are similar to animals found elsewhere, but genetic drift has crafted something other entirely. Extreme forms of life have come to being here. There are eighty different species of lemur, primates that live nowhere else. Half the world’s chameleon species can be found here, with brilliant coloration that matches any tropical bird. The giraffe necked weevil can be found here, an odd insect whose neck takes up over half its body length. Reed lemurs spend their entire lives on mats of reeds in a lake. Sifaka lemurs dine heartily on Euphorbia cacti, which are filled with a milky poisonous fluid that burns human flesh upon touch; they are able to leap at speed upon cacti without impaling themselves upon the dangerous spines. The elusive Fossa, a distant relative of the mongoose, is the largest predator, and hunts the lemur. Underground rivers are filled with ancient fish unchanged for hundreds of millions of years. Radiated tortoises live in scrub brush, living as long as 180 years. A vast salt lake oversees a spiny forest of arid extremes. The variation in landscape and the effect it has on the climate are why this island has among the greatest diversity of any place on Earth.

The impeccable photography captures a strange world unlike anything you have seen before, with intimate images , but with a distanced sensibility. Attenborough manages to reveal Madagascar as hostile, yet deeply intriguing, and from a wildlife perspective a coveted destination. Environmental degradation has taken its toll on the whole of the island, fragmenting habitats for farmland and charcoal production. Deforestation has succeeded in eroding what viable farmland there is. The rural Malagasy population is amongst the poorest in the world, and such poverty serves to further degrade the land with badly planned efforts to feed the people. In the recent past, Madagascar’s government had taken greater steps toward conservation; land had been set aside for parks to drive ecotourism, with half of set fees returning to local populations to incentivize conservation. With the coup that chased President Ravalomanana into exile, the park system and conservation efforts have collapsed, allowing gangs to sack the forests for lumber and endangered species for pets. Of course, the outgoing President was well on his way to reversing his own work, attempting to sell half his nation to Daewoo for export-only crop production. Protected rosewood rainforest was cut to the ground, sold to China, making more cheap crap for Americans and Europeans to buy. All of this serves organized crime traffickers, leaving the domestic population worse off than before. This has served to convince, to some extent, the Malagasy people that it behooves them to protect the biodiversity as a valuable investment, rather than selling it off to soulless foreigners.

Madagascar gets across all too well the importance of the natural habitats here. Elephant birds, at 3 meters in height, were the tallest birds that ever lived. They once lorded over the southern beaches, until they met the first explorers to reach Madagascar. Now all that remains of them are eggshell fragments on a southern beach. This story has repeated itself since across the whole of this fragile nation, erasing forever innumerable plants and animals that fought for survival. Conservationists and the local population have a renewed passion to create a more sustainable model, and the most important agents are the people of Madagascar. Understanding of this land has only just begun, and such learning is more than academic. The Rosy Periwinkle, found only in Madagascar, is the source of a chemotherapy agent used for Hodgkin’s lymphoma and pediatric leukemias. The struggle to preserve Madagascar is the same as that all over the world – it is to preserve ourselves.

Tourism is one of the best ways to get involved – to learn about this strange and beautiful land, contact one of the many tour operators: Rainbow tours (www.rainbowtours.co.uk), Cactus Tours (www.cactus-madagascar.com), or the tourism board (www.madagascar-tourisme.com). The high definition version of Madagascar is not much of an improvement upon DVD quality, but it is still in equal turns breathtaking and illuminating.

Made during a fertile period for its star, director Harold Ramis, and writer John Hughes, Vacation is one of the best comedies imaginable. A strong argument can be made, however, that it is also the greatest film ever made about America. This great and misunderstood nation’s guarded attitude about its past resulted in a careful cultivation of the great myths that make up American history. In the salad days of the Reagan Years, when Americans took pride in being American, invulnerability was our motto, and one of many unearned medals sported on our breast. Our every need utterly satisfied, the ultimate pasttime of the middle class became the pursuit of time wasted. The landscape was littered with dusty tourist traps that attempted to evoke the frontier west, albeit with glitter globes and souvenir ashtrays, ample parking hither and dither. Rural areas had only begun to be drained of the farmers who voted for the conservative revolution, leaving little along the decayed spine of Route 66 apart from empty motels and The Biggest Ball of Twine for the next hundred miles or so.

For the offspring of The Greatest Generation, there was no spoiling conflict, and we began feeling our oats once The Gipper took the White House and challenged the Soviet Union for the soul of the world. High times indeed, at least for weapons manufacturers and large corporations entrenching themselves globally in a period of extraordinary opportunity and optimism. For the middle class, apparent wealth was on the increase. There was no driving force of hunger or fear; the Iron Curtain was as far away as the nearest quasar as far as the nuclear family was concerned, and nukes were a threat, but an impossible one for an America insulated from the dangers faced by the rest of the world. While Afghanistan and Latin America served as pawns between the Cold War antagonists, the rest of America set its sights upon the horizon. And what would occupy our imagination as the single greatest object to attain? Disneyworld. A population devoid of imagination could imagine no more exotic and exciting location in a world where no other country existed. Who needs the White Cliffs of Dover or the wildebeest herds of the Serengeti when one could shake the hand of Goofy? Disneyworld is the penultimate accomplishment of the truly astounding ability of America to create and promote its own myths as the defining icons of the human species. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford took an eviscerating look at this myth, while Vacation considers the great American goal of self-distraction while lost amidst these myths.

Clark Griswold is a successful researcher of food additives – a fitting enough metaphor for superficiality that becomes a motif, since such chemicals add nothing of nutritional value. His wife and two kids are the very picture of domestic adequacy. Chevy Chase delivers a towering performance that is not only hilarious, but is pitch perfect in analyzing The Dad. Obsessed with distraction and living in fear of irrelevance, The Dad is distant enough to be regarded as an amusing acquaintance, but involved enough to be source of humiliation for any offspring within earshot. You know The Dad; t-shirt announcing that a bald spot is in fact a solar panel for a sex machine, blasting the latest rock from Buddy Holly, and oblivious to the concept of generational differences. We have all experienced this, at least before those of us who have spawned actually became The Dad in our own right. Well-intentioned, flawed, but involved. He was more embarrassing the more involved he was in his attempts to expose us to culture of a sort. In hindsight, these experiences were of greater value than I realized; around the time I learned just how limited my understanding of this world was, and the relative pointlessness of my life, I found my father to have grown wiser by several orders of magnitude. Anyway – he is the one to lead us into our first temptations and bring us closer to a larger and more colorful world. The vacation functions as a way to distill the Consumer Quest into a few expensive and strange days where we eat in bad restaurants, find the touristy places eager to separate lost people in loud shorts from hard-earned cash, and buy pointless trash that is almost admirably pure in serving no practical function.

From the opening bell, it is apparent that Vacation is onto something. Prior to initiating this epic journey, Clark buys a car specially designed for the purpose. He intends to get a sporty car for the family (whatever that means) but ends up stuck with a far greater chariot – the Family Truckster. Astonishingly ugly, this car sustains a tremendous amount of damage as it bears our white middle class family across the wasteland of America. On the way they visit an ersatz Old West town where the sheriff wears Nikes and the bartender shoots customers with blanks. They bounce from one cheap motel to the next, singing tunelessly in the car. They visit their lower class embarrassment of a family who survives on welfare, night jobs for the wife, and disability checks. With nothing to do except read porn and drink heavily, Eddie and his constantly expanding brood represent the object of hatred for taxpayers everywhere. Surviving almost entirely by the dole, they actively breed just to soak up more of the working man’s paycheck. The whole section is hilarious, like when Eddie offers Clark a ‘cool one’, hands him the open beer he was drinking and cracks open his own; or asks for a little extra cash, like $52,000. Cartoonish, yes, but like every other segment, this was in here for a reason. The segment makes light of poverty, but this is not about analyzing reality, but in how the middle classes see the lower rungs of the economic ladder. The lower classes are depicted as bleeding the country dry with no hope of ever attaining independence. They remain essential, however, as the great motivator of the middle class, to work oneself to death, with the only reward being employment up to the point of demise. The fear is potent and rules our waking hours – not fear of hunger, mind you, but of failure, and of forever being mired in circumstances that cannot be repaired. Even if Eddie went to school or learned a trade, there is no way he could support the fifteen or so children scurrying about their rural hovel.

Fear becomes a theme of sorts, as their next stop is lovely St. Louis. Or rather, the accidental exit to East St. Louis that every white man carefully avoids. The saxophone starts up, day turns instantly to night, and the streets are full of black guys. To the last man they are shiftless, idle, and move only for cash or hubcaps.

Clark: “Excuse me, sir? Could you tell me how to get to the expressway?”

Pimp: “Fuck yo momma!”

They stop to get directions (all the way down about a half a block to ask some guy sitting in a Torino with no wheels), which is long enough to be left with bald rims. Racist cheap shot or gritty documentary? You decide! These would be the only stereotypes in Vacation if the white characters were not all carefully crafted honkys. Oh, and the used car salesman is a Jew.

They travel on, a sojourn that resembles Aguirre’s doomed foray to El Dorado the further they go. Lost in the desert, wrecking the car on a massive jump off a ramp, no cash or credit cards, and (shudder) stuck with driving Aunt Edna to Phoenix, this nightmare is funny only on the strength of fantastic writing and a relentlessly upbeat performance by Chase. The greatest scene involves animal cruelty, as Aunt Edna’s hated dog is dragged to its death, and Clark is pulled over by a dog-loving policeman. As he struggles to feign regret and sadness while biting the inside of his face to keep that lethal grin at bay, he – and we – are pissing ourselves. It just goes on and on, taking full advantage of that great laugh we all seem to get at the worst time. Like at a funeral or job interview when that errant thought creeps in to start the giggle loop moving. Clark then robs a hotel and sprints past the Grand Canyon (ironically, the only national treasure on display here), as Disneyland is just several hours away. Even the corpse of Edna fails to slow down this whitebread train, left to molder on some cousin’s porch. Well, fuck that guy for leaving on vacation, right?

Finally, they arrive at Disneyland (well, Walleyworld anyway) to find it is closed for two weeks. The only solution is a terrorist takeover in order to hit the coasters, naturally. This is in keeping with the theme of American exceptionalism – impulsive, poorly planned vacation and all – they want it, and they shall have it all immediately. That is whole point of a vacation, to have what you want, when you want it, and pay as little as possible so you can bitch about poor service, dirty silverware, and hotel rooms with DNA still on the sheets. America is the biggest, but also the cheapest, filled coast to coast with Chinese-made shit that will last maybe a month before falling to pieces. Furniture of particle board, houses of thin wood and drywall, roads designed to last a couple of years, cars with engines prorated for 50,000 miles, and the haute cuisine of fast food that packs them in with full restaurants and backed up drive-throughs. And speaking of our fuel of choice, if it doesn’t come from a powder-filled bag in a box to microwave and scrape off a pan, it just isn’t American. We have some of the world’s greatest talent, best research, and latest technology, but we fail to appreciate that greatness. The anti-intellectual movement that began in earnest with Lee Atwater has matured into a genuine national identity, to the point where even intellectual politicians try to appeal to the representatives of mouthbreathers that hate them. In the end, the only sane thing Clark aspires to is cheating on his wife with 80s-era Christie Brinkley.

Is this a long trip from National Lampoon’s Vacation? Not really. The Griswolds are not vile people – Clark is a researcher with a food company, so he is no dummy. But he and his family don’t exactly shoot for the high brow entertainment. They are cheap, boorish, dull, and value nothing. This works as comedy, but I like to think of Vacation as part fever-dream in Clark Griswold’s head. Successfully evading a cop after killing a dog? Being able to get away with running game on a hot chick who is following you across the country while your wife is watching? And not ending up in jail after taking control of a shitty theme park at gunpoint? It is all a dream – a waking dream of variable lucidity for America’s middle class white man. And it is inexorably depressing while being one of the best comedies ever made. To think – the best time we can have exploring our country is to share the road, the hotels, and the utterly crappy chain restaurants with a throng of increasingly obese livestock with a disconcertingly high tattoo-tooth ratio. This is why I stick to museums when I travel domestically. Sure, a lot of them look the same, but at least one can hide from the proles. Welcome to the country of my birth.

Most natural history programs examine a particular organism or habitat and consider how the elements have shaped their evolution. Series such as Planet Earth or David Attenborough’s Life exist to explore how the basic factors of land and weather determine the choreography with which flora and fauna dance endlessly amidst one another in a battle for survival. In Earth: The Biography, geologist Iain Stewart (who exhibits a pure childlike joy in these discussions) laid the groundwork of the elemental forces defining this complex planet – Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. How The Earth Changed History brings this series full circle by reconsidering how these have shaped human history, and how dissonant human tribes struggled with one another for local, and eventually global, supremacy. Ethnocentric accounts of history would have you believe that one’s own culture and intelligence were the sole agents of change. It turns out that humans tended to gather in certain areas to maximize their use of natural resources, and luck often played a tremendous part as to which came out on top. The disparate disciplines of geology, geography, history, and anthropology are weaved effortlessly together in what is a dizzying spectacle that regards where we are headed. Documentaries of late tend to focus on our future with either conservative blinders or progressive gloom; this series comes to the conclusion that mankind itself has become a force of nature that has changed the Earth, and such enormous control is reason for optimism.

One is reminded of the approach of Jared Diamond as How The Earth Changed History considers resource management in the rise and fall of civilizations and explains why certain nations are at the top of the game in this uncertain world. It is an unforgiving place, and humanity along with the rest of the animals was forced to adapt or die. Though the forces that shape the Earth are familiar, the way they interplay shifts inexorably. In the introductory chapter, the fate of all life is linked to water, which is always in motion; this is made clear as Stewart examines rock carvings of crocodiles – in the middle of the Sahara Desert. The water cycle moves the relatively small amount of drinkable water useful for human activity from sea to wind to mountains and rainfall, rivers and lakes, and back to the sea. This cycle was notoriously difficult to understand and control for prehistoric man. History is defined by hardship, demonstrated as the last ice age precipitated a drought lasting centuries in the fertile crescent. The hunter-gatherers there adapted by fashioning stone tools to become more efficient hunters, and then invented the sickle, sparking the agricultural revolution. Growing crops necessitated a ready water supply, beginning mankind’s connection to water, namely rivers, that brought a predictable source. This in turn drove the development of an organized society, as only a high degree of organization can deal with water shortages.

The Nile River valley benefited from the river rich in volcanic minerals originating in Ethiopia, and business, taxation, and societal hierarchy were driven by the water. The Garamantians established an advanced nation in the Sahara desert through the cunning use of deep boreholes that were the first use of groundwater. One civilization after another is examined for their methods of adapting to volatile water supplies, and often their failure to continue that adaptation and outstrip their resources in lean times. This includes a fascinating section on how the British empire’s failure to manage India’s water supply provided the spark for the resistance movement. This is not only a look at the past, but at our very near future, considering the increasing global tension over the water supply that will eventually lead to the next world war.

And so we continue through Deep Earth, the source of the minerals that yielded the Ages of Bronze, Iron, and Plastic; Air, the wind power that gave birth to maritime superpowers; and Fire, the catalyst for converting stored carbon into the energy that drives industry. All of these forces converge upon fault lines – the cracks between intercontinental plates allow magma to the surface, carrying precious metal, providing a surface to trap groundwater, and can act as a reservoir for fossil fuels. Indeed, fault lines are the hub of civilizations. It is fair to say that the vanguard nations were those able to best harness these elemental forces to power commerce, organize society, wage war, and drive further intellectual pursuits into improving upon their ability to harness those forces.

The series is peppered with anecdotes that are not only intriguing, but are relevant to our current resource management problems. The Minoans of Crete had a tremendous navy until their neighbor and trading partner was buried in a volcanic explosion, eventually sending a tidal wave that smashed the Minoan fleet, a loss from which they never recovered. Los Angeles obtains its entire water supply from distant areas, draining communities to feed the desert in a way that could become problematic, but for the present this unsustainable metropolis thrives from the gold and the oil brought to the surface by the fault line. The first energy crisis occurred hundreds of years ago as Europe was depleted of wood, which drove the search for another fossil fuel. This turned out to be coal, and the harvesting of this from water-logged mines required the development of the steam engine (the first use was a mine pump) that sparked the industrial revolution. Interestingly, Britain had coal that was easily exploited and close to urban centers. China also had massive coal reserves, but they were hundreds of miles from any city, behind the Yellow River. This delayed China’s industrial revolution until the mid 20th century. The most sobering strands of this massive story relates to our dependence upon oil – it takes 3 million years for the Earth to convert dead material into a one year supply of oil. This segues neatly into climate change, and the final chapter of the planetary force of the Human. The cautionary tale here relates to the Sidoarjo mud volcano that erupted in Indonesia in 2006, expelling 30k cubic meters of mud daily, anticipated to continue for the next 30 years. The cause was a blowout in a natural gas well. In 2010, the Deep Water Horizon disaster has given even greater food for thought about the cavalier way we view our extraordinary power to shape the planet. Add to this the 26 million tons of plastic we add to the oceans per year and the degradation of more than 25% of the planet’s farmland, and this should paint a fairly dire picture.

Iain Stewart, however, finds this impact to be cause for concern, but also sees it as an opportunity. Time is spent on the technological efforts to reverse this damage, and this is an industry that has only begun to grow. The Svalbard seed vault is not a sign that plant life is being wiped out, but rather that the nations of Earth are cooperating to ensure humanity’s agricultural future. The drive to find an alternative to fossil fuels is at a fever pitch, for both political and practical reasons. As Dr. Stewart puts it, “As a species, we think we are special. Now is our chance to prove it.”

Though you may have heard some of these stories before, what is fascinating is the way they are strung together into a narrative spanning prehistory to the modern. And in our present age, termed the Anthropocene Epoch, Man is truly in command of this world, for better or worse. It is poetic that just as we have truly come to understand just how much of an impact we have, we are now able to more precisely control that impact. How The Earth Changed History is about as epic in scope as a series can be, and the cinematic treatment is pure entertainment that stays with you long after the closing credits. It is difficult to watch this feature and not have its ramifications inform your behavior, and perhaps regard our might as a species with some well-heeded caution.

Most anything you need to know about human nature when it comes to love, jealousy, and the power of lust can be found within this most treasured of Max Ophuls’ works. On its surface, it is as simple as the given appearance of any love affair, as a bored wife whose marriage has grown distant becomes drawn to a handsome stranger. Just as it is with any relationship, it becomes more complicated when you look beyond, and connect with the characters. Though Ophuls is most renowned for his virtuoso shots where the camera whirls as if in a feverish haze, what he truly does best is get the viewer involved. To sit in the audience of La Ronde or Lola Montes is a misnomer; you find your self on stage, caught up in the dance. The artifice is made plain, as if you were a part of the writing of the work; the acting is naturalistic, as if they were speaking plainly to you as well; the direction is precise with a casual touch, and the circle in which the characters dance comes to encompass you, and so you are one with the rhythms of the work.

The three main characters are the General, the Baron, and Madame. There are some names (excepting our heroine, the reasons for which are left up to the audience), but they are types, and who needs names with this sort of thing anyway? The General is a powerful man, and carries the respect his position demands like one of many medals on his chest. He and his wife, Madame, are wealthy, comfortable, and pampered as though all the world was a cushion. These people would seem so removed from the lives that normal people live that there should be a danger of being distant to the point of irrelevance. Even so, Ophuls’ touch is so light that the financial gulf does not matter. That, and the titular earrings are made into a symbol of how we value the things in our life. They were a wedding gift for Madame from her husband, and she is selling them at a discount to cover her extravagant lifestyle. They are worth very little to her, in a fine comment upon the complacency of marriage. Her husband is made aware of this, and so repurchases them, only to give them away even more carelessly to a lover who is on her way out of his life. They are passed along like a meaningless bauble.

Then, the Baron enters our story. Played with the very definition of class by Vittorio de Sica (the man could take a shit and somehow make it seem classy), he buys the earrings from a busker in the streets of Morocco. “I did not know who I had bought them for yet” he states later, epitomizing the boundless optimism of the hopeless romantic. And so he meets Madame as their carriage wheels lock, a traumatic beginning for what would become a tumultuous love that would become their prison. When he gives Madame the earrings she so lifelessly disposed of earlier, they have acquired all the meaning in the world. Strange how such an object changes in meaning depending on whom it was acquired from, when, and why. This subject is the focus of Summer Hours, and if it was influenced by The Earrings of Madame de…, then it is truly a pedigree of quality. They spend time together, they dance, endlessly it would seem in a sequence where the Baron remarks it has been days, then hours since they had seen each other last. Surely other words pass between them, but the time is what has truly solidified the attraction, this moment in time. The Earrings appear to have bottled this lightning, and she is willing to shed all earthly possessions, and risk no harm to them. The General has not been blind to this infatuation, and it is when the Earrings resurface that he realizes it is no passing emotion.

The inherent value in objects – or lack thereof – is one of many aspects that make this work a universal one, and so the gap between the wealthy subjects and the more than likely lower to middle class viewer ceases to matter. The things we accumulate in life, for better or worse, help define us as individuals. If you are superficial, then only the appearance of wealth is necessary for an object to have value for you. Perhaps the objects in your house appeal to you as pieces of art, or remind you of someone or something of great importance to you at some point. Or maybe you are not aware of the meaning of these things. And when you die, the meaning of them dies with you. In a way, people are objects along these lines. The General certainly considers his wife an ostentatious decoration, and his jealousy toward the Baron is hardly based on moral indignation. His possession has taken flight, and in public fashion.

Proper treatment of one’s belongings is a practical quality; the General in this story is the only practical character. He observes the accepted behaviors of the day, and remains within his appointed social moorings. Though he has an affair, he keeps it discreet; the order is kept. His wife and the Baron, on the other hand, are wildly impractical, making a rather public display of themselves as they careen into love with abandon. The General even offers the Baron some rather friendly and astute advice on keeping such things tidy in the eye of society. But the lovers can hardly be bothered to adhere to rules they do not value. Such is the mysterious nature of love, in that it compels people to lose their minds and pay little heed to their own sanity or safety. When the time comes to provide closure to our story, the characters involved do what they must, carrying out their proscribed roles to whatever end. Stubbornness and inflexibility are among many traits that make this species a curious one, and impossible to truly understand.

For these reasons, The Earrings of Madame de… is endlessly rewatchable and timeless. If ever there were a selection of films that would start a person on the journey of coming to terms with the elusive qualities of human nature, this one would occupy a position near the top. We see ourselves in the players of the story, and were we to inhabit their roles, it is doubtful we would behave with much of a difference in the outcome.

Meet Ed Avery (James Mason), your standard issue Eisenhower-era paterfamilias. He works dutifully as a school teacher, making sure to tussle the necessary mop-tops when called upon, as well as taking over in a pinch for overburdened colleagues. His home, proud and sturdy in that typically palatial way, stands as a bulwark against all perceived enemies, both foreign and domestic. And, in a final act of duty and responsibility, he works nights as a taxi dispatcher, making sure to keep such information from his wife, lest she think of him as less than a good and decent provider. He’s also in pain — excruciating pain — and it’s all he can do to remain vertical during the sort of terrifically dull dinner party that just has to be followed by a few hundred rounds of bridge. Yes, Ed is dying, of a rare vascular disease that may or may not exist in the literature, and he has less than a year to live. A year! But there is hope. You see, there’s this experimental new treatment called cortisone. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Some say it’s a miracle drug, others aren’t so sure. But it’s the only hope our dear Ed has of survival, even if he’s not usually a gambling man.

And so begins Ed’s trial by fire, a process that will take him from meek and mild to bold and murderous, creating a sea change that might appear preposterous to a modern eye not imaginative enough to read between the lines. Ed’s rapid transformation into ravenous beast, while not instantaneous (we see him racking and heaving with pain for weeks and weeks while a handy on-screen bar graph shows us how increased doses reduce the pain), is damn near complete, and we can accept that full-tilt insanity is just about the only response to a decade that reduced individuality to a revolutionary act. Ed has disappeared into his role as husband and father, a fact he recognizes as he insults his wife one evening before the madness has fully taken hold. “We’re dull,” he shrugs, not knowing that within a short period of time, he will become a fevered, sweat-drenched maniac who is anything but. Once again, anyone who thinks this is some simple cautionary tale about drugs and hubris is more than mistaken; they will have missed one of the era’s most withering attacks on conformity, even if a man has to damn near butcher his son to shake off the shackles of oppression.

The first sign that Ed has gone off the rocker is when he spontaneously takes his wife and son out for an afternoon of wild, reckless spending. Forget the need for a second job, he crows, and to hell with the guilt over writing hot checks. He even enters a snooty dress shop with the sort of confidence not usually found in a man that surrendered his sack at the altar. More than smiling, he’s strutting, and what does his wife care, as she now has the evening gown she’s always craved from afar. Little Richie even has the bestest bicycle in the whole neighborhood. Ah, but we all know that dad can’t simply be Santa Claus, so it’s just a matter of time until the fangs come out, which means that dad will insist on resurrecting his glory days on the gridiron. Obsessive to a point that would make Al Bundy blush, Ed pumps up his withering football from times gone by and never leaves poor Ritchie alone from then on. He wants to toss the pigskin indoors, outdoors, in the kitchen, and in the field. He throws harder and harder, knocking vases from their stands and little boys from their once secure perches. Ed won’t accept a frail little boy, no sir. He must be toughened for the road ahead, even if that means screeching in his face that dropped passes mean no dinner. Now or ever!

Ed’s in a groove now, barking at drivers going too slow or, in a particularly nasty scene, exploding at the milkman for rattling his bottles with disrespect. He even accuses the mousy gent of being jealous of Ed’s intellectual gifts. “I’ll have your job!”, Ed spits, seizing the first of many opportunities to finally tell these deadbeats what he thinks. He even lets loose on the job, reducing a PTA meeting to an exercise in gratuitous cruelty. He rails about the stupidity of the kids under his care, and lashes out at shocked mothers and horrified fathers alike. Ed no longer wants to teach the children about reading and writing and all manner of nonsense. He wants fire and brimstone in the classroom; rigorous courses in self-reliance, masculine virtue, and tough-minded moral rectitude. He wants leaders, not followers, with tears being left at the door with mommy. By god, he’ll tear the whole damn system down if given the chance, with no one holding him back, especially his sniveling, inferior wife.

In a dinner scene later borrowed by American Beauty, Ed humiliates his gasping spouse so completely that it registers as a near-perfect illustration of marital compromise gone haywire. Until now, Ed had paid the bills, punched his clock, and clicked glasses with hollow friends, but now he’s finished. Even though he will stay at home to raise “his” boy in a manner that will ensure he doesn’t emerge on other side wearing a dress, Ed is now, at least in his own mind, divorced from his wife. He wants nothing to do with her, and will treat her as a piece of furniture if need be. It’s a huzzah moment for organization men everywhere, even if there’s a pull of guilt about what this means for junior. He’s no dummy, and he hates his father with extreme prejudice, especially since dad flipped the fuck out over a glass of milk that came before dinner and wasn’t pre-approved. Richie knows that it’s the pills making dad act with hurricane-force rage, but that doesn’t make it any easier to endure a math lesson that approximates a Nazi show trial. So Richie has to act. He must cut off the supply.

This isn’t as easy as it sounds, as Ed will surely die if he stops taking his drugs. Richie doesn’t care about such small details, and dad damn well knows it. So at long last, dad must kill his son, citing the parable of Abraham and Isaac as proof that murdering one’s children has Biblical justification. But god stopped the killing, Ed’s wife shouts, which prompts Ed’s classic retort: “God was wrong!” He grabs a pair of scissors and prepares for his final act; one borne of love and respect, not drug-induced hysteria. He demands that his wife join in the experience, as it makes perfect sense for both to commit suicide after Richie has been sent to the angels. Many a parent has killed a child to spare it from compromise, weakness, and sin, so what on earth could be the problem?

Leave it to Walter Matthau to save the day, the resident closeted homosexual (he’s disinterested in his “date”, while coming to life when discussing a possible trip with Ed and nothing more than a few sleeping bags) who keeps Ed from becoming too independent, yet resigned to a life of domestic tranquility, by beating his ass on the stairs. It’s a full-fisted brawl, but necessary to demonstrate that at his core, Ed isn’t even man enough to handle a mincing queer. Now subdued, Ed must continue to take the drug, but in proper doses, and without posing as a doctor to steal hundreds of pills for late-night binges. He must be brought back into the fold, quiet as a lamb and surrounded by mediocrity. A lion now tamed, he ends the film in a fatherly embrace, emasculated once again and ready to resume his role as resident sap. And yes, dear, he’ll call the cab company tomorrow. With hat in hand.

“In a region of desperate poverty, four men are hired by an oil company to drive trucks filled with nitroglycerin down treacherous mountain roads in the hot sun.”

This is likely the greatest setup for a film ever, and the first reading of it would send a chill down your spine. The tension is palpable before the film would even begin, as one bad jolt, one tank of nitroglycerin becomes overheated, a single rock slide at the wrong time, and the truck becomes one with the vapor. Moments in silence are no less removed from danger as the volatile fluid cooks in the sun. Hitchcock once noted that if a scene has a bomb in it, ‘show the audience the bomb’. And so this bomb is in full view, and you are left waiting for it to go off. In Wages of Fear, as he did with Diabolique, Henri-Georges Clouzot has made an unforgettable impact in the cinema of tension. A stunning work to be sure, but what makes it an indelible classic is the political statement contained within, one which remains timeless, unfortunately.

The small town in this story could be most anywhere – rural towns are nearly always starving for a source of income. Woe unto those that actually have a local industry, as the discovery of oil, diamonds, or any other lucrative resource only seems to deepen the poverty. Multinationals generally move in with a large investment, and with the promise of jobs and a payoff to the right people in government, the land is broken. Inevitably, the money goes only to the necessary government officials and to the company; the locals get nothing but irreversible disease and trauma. This town is no different. As Mario (a never-better Yves Montand) remarks dryly, “It is easy to get in, but you cannot get out.” People flocked in for work, but there was only work for skilled laborers, and there are no roads out, no trains, and a flight costs far more than anyone has in this decrepit hole. There is nothing to do but drink, subsist, and await the next bar fight. Malaria and leprosy are widespread, but the most common chronic illness is hunger. The entire population lives upon delirium, and works enough to stay in debt. The conscience of the town is within one wide-eyed kid who pleads to anyone in earshot about his work visa, and begs for money to flee to the United States. The greatest aspiration is to be elsewhere.

Clouzot maintains a tight grip upon the production, and even the wide open spaces of this desert town has a claustrophobic feel. In the opening shot, a child wallows in the mud, playing with cockroaches that have been tied together with string. They struggle against each other as they pull in mutually assured inertia – one of the truly great evocative images in populist cinema. Against this rabble is the monolithic SOC, an American oil company. “Where there is oil, Americans are not far behind.” Not much has changed in geopolitics since the 1950s, apart from China emerging as a major player in the petroleum market. Industrial practices are about the same – the work is dangerous, and unskilled locals are the preferred source since they do not have labor unions. Any effort by the proles to disrupt business is met with swift violence at the hands of the company’s private security. They run a tight ship, and brought the entire works and buildings prefabricated – even the cemetery for the workers came ready made.

There is an explosion at the oil drill, and the only way to extinguish the flaming oil gusher is with high explosives. Thus our story begins; still, the stakes would not be so high, nor the extraordinary pressure placed upon the laborers as resonant if Wages of Fear did not spend the first hour in languid character development. The tedium of nowhere in Venezuela is demonstrated in the daily pointless rhythms of boredom. Mario and his cohorts shoot the shit, pass the time, eat, drink, and threaten each other with regularity. There is a woman that Mario fancies, but she is hardly the object of his affection – there is no time or place for strong attachments in this unsentimental terminus. Some have accused Clouzot of misogyny for this indifferent attitude toward women, and the way the only significant female character is treated, but this is the way it is in the harsh places of the world. Women mean attachment, and such things are dangerous when there is little in the way of income. Soft women either become wily opportunists or broken romantics. There is only the work, and the catastrophe at the oil drill means a big payday for those able to survive – US$2000 is enough to escape to a new life. The odds against making a journey across the mountains in a rickety truck without a single jolt sending your nitroglycerin into orbit are astonishingly high, but in a true capitalist system, suicide is as profitable as it is necessary. There is little point withering away in the sun when you can gamble your life away for cash – and you either end up with the means to achieve your goals, or you are dead enough not to care. The Cato Institute would be proud of such a win-win situation.

Though this appears to be a film for the class warrior only, there is a more cynical edge at work here. The lower classes are at each others’ throats in the first act; with the introduction of Jo, a criminal from France who is fleeing the law, tempers flare. The workers are ready to brandish their weapons at a slight, even one so innocuous as turning off a radio in a bar. Several characters set upon each other at first, and these differences vanish once the deadly job appears. Perhaps if a page were borrowed from Upton Sinclair, then the unemployed masses would wreak vengeance upon the company for offering little more than death to its workers. This does not happen in the real world very often, mostly due to manipulation by the company owners, or internecine fighting amidst the workers, and so such a scene has little use in Wages of Fear. The largest character in the film utters nary a line, though it drives every single action – or inaction – that occurs. This character is Fear, that great motivator. It forms that magnificent pillar of supply and demand, and drives every living soul to work their waking moments. The job is offered, and the people line up around the block. There is no class struggle here, which is also strangely relevant to the present. The combination of fear and the drive to consume against a backdrop of globalization has left the world without a labor movement; consider Wages of Fear a harbinger of this world to come.

Apart from its relevance and its stunning depiction of the human spirit placed under impossible pressure, Wages of Fear is cracking entertainment. The scenes where a massive boulder is quietly removed from the road, or two trucks navigate a slippery platform hanging over a precipitous drop rank among the great moments of cinema. Given the leisurely introduction to the characters, the way they respond to their trial resonates with the viewer. Even the reserved quality of Mario fades after he bleeds every drop of his soul in service to SOC – by the time his jittery hands drive the truck into sight of the apocalyptic fire of the drill site, there is nothing left in him. This is one of those films that reaches into you, and leaves you utterly drained by the end. At least it does for those of us fortunate enough not to live under tests like this on a daily basis. For a significant portion of the world, these wages are paid with every morning light.

“When men, even unknowingly are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever their diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come together in the red circle.”

When a great filmmaker reinvents cinema, perfects his technique, and begins to coast, what happens to his creative output? Does he crash into a heap or simply fade into history and irrelevance? Godard veered left and became involved in increasingly disconnected projects, Eastwood has been comfortably chasing mediocrity in the Oscar ghetto, and Coppola is still searching for the better part of his brain matter after Apocalypse Now fired a definitive slug through his magnificent dome. Then there are others who still find ways to reinvent themselves. Werner Herzog remains unpredictable and was never better while crafting Grizzly Man or Encounters at the End of the World; Robert Altman made one his best at the bitter end by using the creative process of A Prairie Home Companion to consider mortality. Jean-Pierre Melville, after playing an integral role in the French New Wave, created an entire mythos of the criminal underworld. The landmark Bob Le Flambeur through the cool perfection of Le Deuxiemme Souffle recast noir and established a stylistic world of men in trenchcoats following a code to a seemingly predetermined end. As his filmography came to a close, Melville stayed in this world (apart from his masterpiece, L’Armee Des Ombres), but appeared to become more philosophical about it. Like many of his contemporaries in French cinema, Melville was a fatalist, and the characters in his films reflected this belief. They have parts to play in a grand tragic comedy, and though there are individual decisions to be made, one cannot escape fate. The dancers take their steps in what appears to be a predestined choreography. The gray wolves of Melville’s shadows would seem to be able to evade such an end with lives lived outside of the norm and established rules, but such outsiders adhere to the least forgiving ideology of all. Cops have their duty, hoods have their code, and all have their destiny. What began in Le Samourai came to a resolute end in Le Cercle Rouge.

Corey is a veteran thief who has just been released from prison; before he exits the gates he is offered a diamond heist job by a guard. Vogel is another thief and killer who is on his way to prison, escorted by detective Mattei on board a train. He evades the detective and makes a desperate escape into the forest as winter descends upon the countryside. Both are aberrations from the natural order that will soon be corrected. There is a daring theft, a disturbance in the smooth ocean of daily life, but once the waves break, they return to their previous level. You probably know where the story is going already, but as with any great story, it is in how it is told that our attention is seized. The players are among the best in the business, and watching skilled individuals doing a job well is the best entertainment possible. Corey and Vogel are played by Alain Delon and Gian Maria Volonte, adept men who work in silence, preferring to speak with their eyes when at all possible. Their paths cross and it is as if both were expecting to find the other; when Vogel crawls into the boot of his parked car, Corey registers no surprise. After all, he is on the run as well, after robbing his former employer for giving his ex a reason to betray him. Women do not have much of a place in this world apart from entertainment or disappointment. Masculine figures are all that matter in a world of sharp edges and fatal wounds.

So the hoods are on the run, and the accomplished Mattei is on their trail. Even when he knows full well they have escaped, a good cop knows a criminal will reveal themselves eventually. As his chief is careful to remind him, “All men are guilty. They are born innocent, but it doesn’t last.” He would know; the best policemen think like criminals, move in their circles, embrace their vices. There will be one more intersection for them all. Before we get there, there is a burglary, and it requires the services of a crack shot. In steps ex-cop Jansen, played with steely quiet by Yves Montand. He is an alcoholic, introduced in an unsettling scene that is one of the most vivid episodes of delirium ever filmed. His sure hand may provide him with a moment of redemption; just as performing their tasks skillfully may redeem Corey and Vogel; just as capturing his quarry shall redeem Mattei. Risk and redemption, and the void beyond is a recurrent theme in Melville’s work. He understood that success does not justify itself – victory only lives in the moment, but there is always the failure of tomorrow waiting for you. This can be seen in the resigned look of Vogel and Corey; they regard one another with no fear, just caution. When Vogel meets Corey, he holds a gun on him until intentions are made clear. Corey tosses him a pack of cigarettes, followed by a lighter, requiring Vogel to put away the gun. Mattei clearly shows no gusto for capturing his prey. No self-righteous speeches about right and wrong, since those terms are interchangeable depending on your perspective. He does not do the right thing, just his thing. This can be seen in the costuming for the characters, which are identical – cops and criminals look alike, act alike, speak alike; and if times are tough, they exchange their roles as outlaws turn informer and cops skim off the top.

The centerpiece of Le Cercle Rouge, as with all heist films, is the job itself. Strangely enough, it occurs with little fanfare, no expository dialogue about the setup, and little tension during the job. It would seem lazy, but Melville always has another agenda in play. Almost before the theft is completed, it seems clear that this will make no difference in the outcome, and any sense of triumph should remain fleeting. This is especially true for Montand’s character – an alcoholic ex-cop fresh off his DT’s would be ripe for tragedy. It is up to him to place a shot perfectly or they would all be trapped. After he readies his rifle, bolted into a tripod, he makes a snap decision that sucks the oxygen out of the room. He reclaims his soul – in the practical world this means validation of his craft and nothing more – in a temporary fashion, but that is good enough.

As with all of Melville’s work, the shots are crisp, the details immaculate, every word, gesture and motion efficient almost to a fault. If not for the extraordinary craft, one could accuse the director of egregious exercises in style. Even if so, this is a philosophical work in the guise of a genre film. Melville was no Buddhist, and the opening quote does not reflect a sense of destiny as a vague spiritual force, but rather the inevitability borne of human nature. These are the ants to which Harry Lime referred in the ferris wheel, and they would not begrudge the indifference of a distant audience. There is indulgence in the form of entertainment, whiskey, perhaps an errant rose or time with a woman, but none of these players are under any illusion that such things are granted. These things, joy and pain, all pass and so we meet our end.

William Castle’s deliriously goofy Mr. Sardonicus doesn’t quite reach the dizzying brilliance of either The Tingler or Strait-Jacket, but it’s a gem in its own right; a preposterously insipid B-movie with the gothic grandeur to match. Taking place in an Old Europe only a comfortably stateside studio set could provide, as well as the sort of cold, isolated estate you’d expect to find in a cheapie Nosferatu remake, the film might very well be confused for an old fashioned morality tale, if not for the fact that Castle himself makes an appearance to delight in the villain’s suffering. Under the guise of a “punishment poll” (a particularly clever Castle gimmick), the director emerges from a dry ice fog to ask the audience whether or not the nasty Baron Sardonicus (Guy Rolfe) should be given a last-minute reprieve. Given that only one possible outcome was actually filmed, and that Castle is one of cinema’s most gleeful, smirking sadists, we are delighted to have our baser instincts confirmed. The Baron, in fact, will be destroyed at last. But that’s for the conclusion. The journey to that indelible moment is so engaging and bizarre that we can’t help but wish our current hacks had Castle’s wicked regard for cheap, satisfying entertainment.

The story itself is all Castle: Sir Robert Cargrave (Ronald Lewis), a respected doctor with the power to heal every conceivable ailment with what amounts to a gentle massage, is summoned by the creepy Krull (Oscar Homolka) one evening to visit the home of Mr. Sardonicus. All is shrouded in mystery, but the bait is sweetened when Cargrave is informed that his former love, one Maude Sardonicus (Audrey Dalton), is also in dire straits. Of course it’s a trap, but who knew that in the end, Cargrave would be asked to use his medical knowhow and revolutionary techniques to give Sardonicus a new face. You see, the Baron has lived for years with an unholy grin (imagine the Joker with wax lips and Mr. Ed’s set of choppers); a curse laid upon him after he dug up his father’s grave to retrieve the winning lottery ticket he accidentally placed in his pocket. Who knew the old man would finally have a run of good luck, even though it took dying to see it through. And so we flash back to that fateful night in the cemetery, when the Baron’s life forever changed after coming face to face with his rotting husk of a dad. We too see the body, and it isn’t that revolting, but apparently the guilt is too much for poor Sardonicus, and his new-found riches are soon tempered by Hollywood’s worst-ever make-up job. No wonder they shroud the actor in shadow most of the time (that is, when he isn’t wearing a mask).

In some ways, we can’t blame Sardonicus for his methods (he tells Cargrave that if the “surgery” fails, he will be swiftly killed by Krull), but he’s soon established as an even bigger bastard by kidnapping pretty women for sick experiments. Under the guise of a “night with a millionaire,” Sardonicus selects a single beauty among many to submit to unthinkable torture. It is claimed that these women are dying to help Sardonicus lose the smile, but we know he’s just a bad, bad man. To dispel any further doubt, he hangs people by their thumbs and keeps a secret room under lock and key, where disobedient victims are sent so that they can spend some quality time with the Baron’s dead father. An added quirk is the Baron’s insistence that while picture frames dot the estate, no pictures will be found within them. As Krull explains, “The baron is an unusual man, of unusual convictions. In such frames, ordinary men would honor the portraits of their forefathers. But the baron has disowned his forefathers in one magnificent gesture.” It’s the kind of dialogue that would have made Ed Wood proud.

In the end, the doctor is successful in removing the grin (he seems to have used an experimental muscle relaxer and more vigorous massage), but in the spirit of The Twilight Zone, Sardonicus’ face has so relaxed that he can no longer open his mouth. The irony! Watching the nasty Baron attempt to eat and drink after realizing his new curse is a comic highlight, though one filled with unexpected pathos. Not really. It is then that Cargrave reveals his own secret: he used a simple placebo, while the grin (and locked mouth) are both psychosomatic afflictions that could have been reversed with simple will power. All those riches, and no way to save himself. And so Sardonicus will die alone, afraid, and at the hands of an angry Krull, who uses the Baron’s weakness as an opportunity to get revenge for losing an eye to his master’s savagery. If only Castle had found a way to sneak in Vincent Price before the credits rolled.

Kathryn Bigelow’s respectable effort in 2009’s gritty war drama The Hurt Locker aside, most cinematic adventures helmed by the female persuasion end up like Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron’s listless, limp noodle adaptation of Julie Powell’s inexplicably popular blog and book, both of which should go forever unread by anyone sporting a sliver of self-respect. Regardless of the characters involved, time period under discussion, or geographic location explored (here, contemporary Queens and post-war Paris), the centerpiece becomes the emotional retardation of women, and how, despite driving away the men in their lives with manipulative whining, navel-gazing, and spontaneously irrational outbursts, they are heroic for no reason save their refusal to give in. Their victories, hard-won though they may be, are little more than endurance tests of bulldog stubbornness; endless rounds of tears, roars, and spitfire blasts to keep everyone within earshot attending to their infantile desires. Julie Powell (Amy Adams) is merely the latest in this hate parade, and it seems fitting that her absence of direction (and meaningful work) leads to an obsessive on-line journal that comes to substitute for actual life. She charts her hopes, dreams, cares, and woes, but primarily, this is a quest to cook each and every recipe from Julia Child’s classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. As you would expect, it’s less about the food than the need to fill a giant chasm spurred by the complete absence of personality. How fortunate she has yet another audience via DVD.

If this unfortunate movie has crossed your path at all, it’s likely you’ve heard that while the Julie scenes are pointless and irritating, the Julia sections shine with a luminous, effortless grace. After all, it’s Meryl Streep we’re talking about, and even in fluff, she always brings her A-game. Having won several critics’ awards so far, she’s now the frontrunner for the Oscar, either signaling the Academy’s pathological need to end the Master’s nearly three-decade drought, or the year’s unparalleled dearth of captivating performances. I’m certain it’s a dash of each, but who on earth thought the long wait would be broken by something so utterly embarrassing? Not only does the film stumble along like a wounded halfwit in search of velvet, the scenes with Julia Child do little but bring to light how even the greatest of talents cannot elevate shit-stained material. We thought Streep could get away with reading the phone book on the john, but sure enough, even she has her limits. Playing Child like a cross between Mrs. Doubtfire and Andre the Giant, Streep is shockingly hateful; a woebegone circus freak with all the charisma of pancreatic cancer. Even her earthy, “common” touch equates to a mangled hoof down the blackboard, and while it would normally be a relief to flip back to the present, Julie’s umpteenth kitchen meltdown is hardly the healing ointment to erase the pain.

Fuck it, man, Streep is downright awful, and no amount of awards buzz can kill the odor. It’s not only a career nadir, it’s enough to resurrect a new blacklist, replacing alleged Communism with the unholy trilogy of bad hair, a dopey drawl, and insipid impersonation. Sure, Meryl, you have that unmistakable voice down pat, but tell us again how this differs from Dan Aykroyd’s classically overrated SNL bit? Predictably, the movie has Julie watch this very scene with her Job-like husband, which serves to unintentionally highlight the absurdity of this whole goddamn enterprise. Sure, we’ve been tolerant of industry titans slumming for dollars and applause before, from Olivier’s “I hef no son” two-step with Neil Diamond, to Joan Crawford jerking off some Geico caveman. And let’s not even mention what Brando did with that progeria midget. But I had always kept Streep on a loftier, more sensible perch, as if the rot was simply her way of winking in our direction. Can she really be blamed, though, when the Best Actress talk is coming from the critical realm? Perhaps she always knew this was a late summer tax write-off; a way to wind down before the real work began. Nope, this is Meryl’s Choice, and this time, she sent us all to the gas chamber.